News of state government and politics is harder to find these days, but for those who want it in endless depth, there’s an answer: WisconsinEye.
Launched in 2007, WisconsinEye is a nonprofit cable channel and Internet site funded by foundations and the broadcast industry. It’s a sort of C-SPAN for the state, and about two dozen other states now have one. Overseen by a bipartisan board, the Eye broadcasts entire legislative sessions, committee meetings, state Supreme Court arguments, and talking-head interviews and panels on public policy.
It works with other media: Veteran journalists Steve Walters (Journal Sentinel Madison bureau chief) and J.R. Ross of WisPoltics.com have interviewed public officials on camera. And all news organizations get to use WisconsinEye footage.
CEO Chris Long, whose 30-year career includes five at C-SPAN, says WisconsinEye fills a void: “There has been a movement away from process coverage of government. It’s resource-intensive. It requires having people on-scene all the time.”
Reviews are mixed. Republicans leaned on the network to enforce its copyright when Eye footage unflattering to a GOP legislator turned up on YouTube. (“We chose not to pursue action,” says Long, who adds that Eye takes its copyright seriously.) A Democratic insider complains the network “seems in search of a mission, constantly trying to fill air time [with] nothing to talk about.”
But Jerry Huffman, a former TV reporter who directs communications for the Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, loves the service, which included his boss in an hourlong panel on college financing: “We don’t fit easily into seven-second sound bites. WisconsinEye thrives because there are people that still want to know what really happened today.”
Audience share is minuscule, but elite, says Huffman. Found way down the dial on cable systems, Eye is easy to overlook. Along with WisPolitics, it represents the further migration of political news from mainstream media to highly specialized channels. Neither Eye nor WisPolitics is to blame – but what’s good for political junkies is less so for the general public.
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Last fall, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel killed its Waukesha edition to save money. This left an opening for the hometown newspaper, The Freeman, to expand, even in the industry’s tight times. With nearly 400,000 people, Waukesha County is more than half the size of the city of Milwaukee – and growing. It’s one of the state’s two wealthiest counties and the Wisconsin Republican Party’s power base.
Yet in February, The Freeman’s owner, Conley Media, abruptly fired or reassigned at least nine in the newsroom, leaving just eight, insiders say. (Other area Conley papers reportedly endured major cuts as well). This, reportedly, after 10 percent wage cuts. For all their influence, Waukesha residents are losing local news.
Papers are declining everywhere, but The Freeman has been dropping for decades. Its circulation is down by more than 25 percent from 10 years ago to less than 12,500, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, and by 50 percent since the early 1980s. By contrast, the Journal Sentinel was still selling about 40,000 copies a day in Waukesha County last September before ending its Waukesha edition.
The Freeman switched in 2005 from evening to morning publication and from home deliverers to distributing by same-day U.S. mail. On federal holidays, subscribers actually get their paper a day late – at a time when papers are updating stories online hourly.
Waukesha Mayor Larry Nelson says “there was healthy competition” between the JS and The Freeman. “I was very pleased with the coverage of both.” With the JS cutback, “there seems to be less coverage and shorter articles.” Nelson worries The Freeman will shrink as well.
The paper has a feisty history since its founding by abolitionists in 1844. Back in the 1960s and ’70s, Publisher Henry “Bud” Youmans was famous for pushing staff to pursue stories aggressively. Two changes of ownership later, Jim Conley picked it up in 1996, adding it to his group of free lifestyle magazines in Milwaukee and Arizona, and daily and free weekly shoppers.
The history since has been uneven. The paper has won a number of Wisconsin Newspaper Association awards. And in an era that emphasizes local voices, Conley papers shrewdly replaced syndicated columns with local ones penned by bloggers, like James Wigderson in The Freeman.
Yet the very staff that won so many awards was decimated. And the notoriously tight-fisted Conley – “pay was so bad, very few people could afford to live in Waukesha or any of the suburbs they covered,” says one former employee – has passed up an opportunity to boldly grow when the JS folded its tent. (Conley’s group publisher, Phil Paige, hung up on Pressroom after declining to comment.)
“I’m sure management wants to claim they are victims of a sour economy,” says one former employee who left earlier. “The real problem is an absentee owner, massive employee churn, and an inability to pick a strategy and stick with it.”
So what’s next? Will someone create WaukeshaEye?
